Sudan vice president returns to peace talks in Kenya amid deadlock
NAIROBI, March 12 (AFP) — Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha returned to peace talks in Kenya with rebel leader John Garang, after talks in Khartoum aimed at unlocking a stalemate on the contested region of Abyei in central Sudan, Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said.
Musyoka said Taha had arrived at the talks’ venue in Naivasha, 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Nairobi, ready to continue negotiations with Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
“We keep on encouraging and praying for them that they overcome the sticking issue of Abyei to enable them move on to the final issue of power-sharing so that we can realise peace in Sudan,” Musyoka told in a press conference attended by Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, currently on an official visit to Kenya.
“I will be following the talks very actively,” Musyoka added.
Taha left for consultations with other top officials in Khartoum last Sunday after the two sides failed to move forward on the status of Abyei, one of the conflict regions that has delayed the talks.
Abyei, an oil-rich area which was annexed from the south’s Bahr el-Ghazal region shortly before independence in 1956 and incorporated into the Kordofan state, has been one of the main theatres in Sudan’s long civil war.
In the 1990s, government troops and allied militia chased hundreds of thousands of ethnic Dinka and Nuer tribesmen from their native Abyei homeland and the SPLA is now demanding the right of the refugees to return to Abyei.
Khartoum is reluctant to return the area to the rebels, but has offered a referundum, which SPLA has turned down, until the refugees return to their homeland.
Tentative agreements have already been reached on the other two contested central regions of Nuba Mountains and Southern Blue Nile, but the agreements have yet to be signed.
While the three regions are not strictly part of southern Sudan, which is largely controlled by the SPLA, the southern rebels claim to represent the people of the areas.
Cimoszewicz, whose nation first hosted direct negotiations between Sudan foes, said the war in Africa’s largest nation affected everybody in the world and not just Sudanese nationals and its neighbours.
“What we can do is to offer political support for this process. These are not just words,” he said, adding that Poland would open an embassy in Kharoum after final peace is reached.
Sudan’s deputy ambassador in Nairobi Ahmed Dirdeiry said the government side is now determined to settle the issue to enable peace return to Sudan.
Sudan’s civil war erupted in 1983 when the SPLA took up arms to end domination of the mainly Christian and animist south by the Arabised, Muslim north.
The conflict, along with war-related famine and disease, has claimed at least 1.5 million lives and displaced more than four million others.
Khartoum and the rebels have already signed an agreement on a 50-50 split of the country’s wealth, particularly oil revenues.
In 2002, Khartoum and the SPLA struck a breakthrough accord granting the south the right to self-determination after a six-year transition period, while last September both sides reached a deal on transitional security, under which the government would withdraw its troops from the south.